The present invention relates to a printing control apparatus and more particularly to a printing control apparatus for causing information to be output through one printer out of a plurality of printers on receiving printing demands from a plurality of terminal units.
In a conventional printing system comprising a plurality of terminal units, a plurality of printers and a printing control unit (print server), print output is obtainable from one of the printers under the control of such a print server when a user designates and transmits a printer name and printing data via a terminal unit. The print server has a print spooling function so that it can simultaneously accept printing commands from the plurality of terminal units. The print spooling function serves to temporarily store output data from the plurality of terminal units and to feed the stored output data to the printers in sequence.
Since the print spooling function is performed so as to output the output data in sequence, inconvenience is caused when real time output is required. In the case of a system described in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. Sho 62-226220, for example, sheets of paper set on a paper tray are not used when printing is performed on a cut form but a separately set cut form is used. In this case, there arises inconvenience in that the timing of setting the cut form in a printer is not found out because data is not fed into the printer in real time after printing commands are given. For this reason, this system is arranged so that the function of giving priority to outputting designated data is provided, whereby the timing of setting the cut form in the front inserter of the printer is determined.
In a print server for controlling a plurality of printers, a virtual printer having standardized capabilities is assumed usable for absorbing different capabilities of printers by means of software on the sever, and terminal unit users are provided with the capabilities of the virtual printers instead of the capabilities of physical printers.
Nevertheless, there still exist processes to be performed directly for the physical printers even when the virtual printers are provided for the terminal unit users, the processes including font downloading, setting a user default environment, utilizing the manual feed function of the physical printer and so forth. Therefore, the problem is that even though the user who is provided with only the virtual printer as an object to which printing processes are performed, cannot perform the processes intended for any specific physical printer.